WiiBuddy is a biproduct of my senior project at GMU, which made extensive use of Wii controllers. During development, I realized that it was more difficult than it needed to be to utilize Wii controls with Unity and that there was no product available on the Unity Asset Store to do just that.

So after graduation, I spent the summer working with a former classmate to cram as much functionality as we could into this. We released a Mac version and years later I revisited the project to finish the Windows version in C++.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Nintendo. The idea was that if we could make Wii controls more readily available to people that couldn’t afford a $10,000 devkit, then maybe people would be able to create much bolder and more creative stuff before making that investment.

Sales trickled in for a while, but after the advent of VR platforms such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, sales increased significantly (as did requests for tech support). Interestingly, most of these new sales seemed to be to make use of the Wii Balance Board specifically.

and you can purchase it right here!

Here’s a video of me back in 2012 showing off all the different controllers WiiBuddy could utilize.

We also managed to create a substantial API of some 66 functions, which you can see here.